Those screaming about Trump drown out legitimate concerns

That isn’t a quote from anyone in particular, but the cacophony of screams heard out of everyone from mainstream media to Democrats in DC to right-leaning #NeverTrumper invariably points to the notion that given enough time in office, the President of the United States is going to get us all killed. They may not be that dramatic, but their arguments can be extended out to yield this undesirable end result.

Then again, some of them are being that dramatic.

I am a Federalist. I’m also very clear in my discernment of President Trump’s actions and lack of actions; some have been good, others have been bad. These two qualifiers allow me and others to voice concerns about the GOP in general and the President in particular that deserve a measure of attention. The principles of limiting government, defending freedoms, and protecting life that Federalists (and most true conservatives) believe in are being ignored. in DC.

Here’s the problem. We’re not being heard through the noise, nor are these messages receiving any measure of attention.

It’s a legitimate concern for conservatives and Federalists when DC continues to increase spending, but those concerns apparently aren’t newsworthy when the President lashes out at his latest Twitter victim. DC overreach is quietly expanding, but meltdowns on the left and cheers on the right about things like net neutrality make both sides oblivious to the expansion. Power is being consolidated in DC as fast as if not faster than it was during the Obama, Bush, and Clinton years.

The other day I received word of news that flew completely under my radar.

This Presidential Executive Order was issued on December 20th w/ very little fanfare & virtually no media coverage.

The order targets specific people but leaves a very broad scope through which anyone deemed to be participating in human rights abuses or corruption could have their property seized. Some fake news outlets even reported this was intended to allow the President to seize assets from the Obamas and the Clintons. While technically this order could lead to such an event, it’s not intended for that purpose. However, the broadness of powers that it grants to the executive branch epitomizes what we’re seeing in DC. When the White House or Congress wants to be able to do something outside of their scope, they simply decree that they can and it is so.

This isn’t about my complaints towards Trump or the GOP. This is about the disservice being done by those “in the know” and the complacency of those wanting to fear from these people. Whether it’s mainstream media, pundits on both sides, or politicians themselves, they’re too focused on inconsequential things and using their platforms to blast out unimportant messages. It isn’t just those complaining about the President. It’s the people defending him as well.

Everyone seems to have a very important opinion about Michael Wolff or Steve Bannon, but very few are talking about the infrastructure plan. There are two primary differences between these two topics:

One is interesting in a gossipy sort of way while the other is boring.

One is extremely important and will affect the vast majority of Americans, and one is so inconsequential that its only effect will be on book sales.

Unfortunately, there’s no correlation between the importance of the topic and the amount of commentary or debate devoted to it.

This is a microcosm of the entire Trump presidency so far. If it’s important but not juicy, it gets no play. If it’s something with no real impact other than embarrassing the President, the press is all over it. Unfortunately, they’re not the only ones to blame. Media consumers are aiding them in this farce by focusing on the topics they want us to discuss.

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2 Comments

ed

January 7, 2018 at 4:47 pm

Given Trump’s (and Jared Kushner’s family’s) extensively documented ties to Russian money-laundering and Russian Mob members, It appears that both He and Kushner’s financial empires are subject to this new EO.

I suspect that Mueller ALREADY has enough evidence (from Manafort, Stone, Cohn, & Miller) to tie both Trump and Kushner to enough bribery, corruption and foreign influence (heck – just Trump’s attempts to bribe Putin for participation in his Trump Tower Moscow project) would likely meet the low bar of his EO.

Thank you for posting this as it it DOES appear to be a loaded weapon that could (and with Trump’s thin-skin and vindictive personality likely WILL) be used against US Citizens to freeze their financial assets until they bow to Trump and do his bidding. We see some of this abuse already with the Trump-cult reaction against Bannon and Trump continuing to fan the flames of Bannon-hatred via his Twitter account.

I suspect we have our first dictator in all-but-name and Gen Kelley does not seem to be able to contain him sufficiently.

I also notice there was no sunset provision to Trump’s EO, so it will remain available to future Democrat presidents that wish to personally destroy THEIR rivals as well….

This is a scary document. Thank you for highlighting it so we can be aware. (I still put my faith in God and in the many, many veterans and LEOs (retired and active) that remain armed and prepared for an attempted coup out of Wash DC.

With Trump attacking the Judicial branch and now seeing a Congressional faction lined up to attack anyone that criticizes Trump, Wash DC is starting to look a LOT like Erdogen’s Turkey did just last year (before Erdogen carried out his coup and made himself dictator for life).

Presidential Memorandum for the Chief Counsel for Advocacy of the Small Business Administration
ECONOMY & JOBS (Issued on: December 8, 2017): This appears to require that SBA NOT report to congress on the impact of Trump’s NAFTA renegotiations until AFTER negotiations are complete. This appears to be Trump attempting to remove the ability of SBA to inform Congress of issues that could be resolved during negotiations so Trump can present a (possibly big-business-only) treaty for up-or-down vote, doing harm to small businesses in the short term instead of allowing Congress to influence his negotiations to include small-business concerns.

Contrary to popular reports:
Presidential Memorandum for the Secretary of State
FOREIGN POLICY (Issued on: December 6, 2017) delays for yet another 6 months the Embassy move to Jerusalem. Regardless of what Trump says or his cult believes, Trump has once again (just as Obama has done) signed the waiver to avoid moving the Embassy.

Matt Walsh speaks out on #CovingtonCatholic students and the fake controversy surrounding them

When white Catholic students wearing MAGA hats are caught on video face-to-face with Native Americans on one side and Black Hebrew Israelites on the other, they’re definitely bigoted white supremacist hatemongers who went out looking for minorities to persecute. At least that’s how mainstream media and a good chunk of social media reacted when they saw the initial videos and images of smirking MAGA children.

But that’s not how it went down. It was the exact opposite of how it went down.

When the story first broke, I saw many of my fellow conservatives on Twitter scolding the kids while the progressive gangs attacked them. I held my tongue. It’s not because I don’t speak out against bigotry regardless of which side of the political, religious, or cultural aisle it comes from, but something seemed fishy. Other than having a disconcerting smirk, I didn’t see anything in the kids that resembled the type of bigoted outbursts we’ve seen in the past from actual white supremacists, Antifa, or other hate groups.

It seemed staged. As it turned out, it wasn’t quite staged, per se, but it was manufactured by the two “victim” groups who went after the MAGA kids, not the other way around. As political and religious commentator Matt Walsh asked, were they supposed to drop down to the fetal position when approached by the two groups?

2) They start screaming insults at the high school kids, who were just standing there clearly waiting around for something. They call the kids "incest children" and other insults. The kids respond by drowning the slurs with pep rally style cheers.

4) That's it. The end. The kids did not instigate anything, did not harass anyone, did not insult anyone, did not do anything wrong. The Black Israelites are obnoxious racists. Nathan Phillips was clearly trying to provoke something and when he didn't succeed he just lied instead

Hot takes on social and legacy media are often based on incomplete pictures. Before people get outraged and attack others over perceptions based on partial evidence, perhaps we should wait until the whole story comes to light. Just a thought.

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NY Times invokes Martin Luther King Jr. to attack Israel

When a nation the size of New Jersey is surrounded by enemies and is the subject of incessant condemnation from the United Nations, it’s natural to assume thoughtful people will take a complete look at its circumstances before deciding which side of a contentious debate to support. This is why many Americans still choose to support the nation of Israel despite mainstream media’s efforts to frame it as evil.

Unfortunately, the debate is so complex, most Americans form their perspectives based on very limited data. Passions are so strong on both sides that it often comes down to which side’s message is loudest in the ears of those deciding who to support. The Israel-Palestine debate has been ongoing since the tiny nation was first formed and ramped up greatly following the attacks on Israel in 1967 that resulted in necessary expansion.

Today, the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Golan Heights are all considered “occupied” territories by a majority around the world, at least among those who are paying attention. Despite clear evidence that the very existence of Israel would be threatened if these lands were “returned” to the Palestinians, most of the world calls for the two-state solution as the path to peace.

On top of the disputed lands, the way that Israel maintains peace within its own lands is labeled as oppression against Palestinians living there. The core of the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement’s message is that the Palestinian people are being persecuted. To support this premise, an activist at the NY Times is invoking Martin Luther King Jr and his opposition to the Vietnam War as the roadmap by which BDS activists should muster their own courage and build more support to fight the nation of Israel.

Reading King’s speech at Riverside more than 50 years later, I am left with little doubt that his teachings and message require us to speak out passionately against the human rights crisis in Israel-Palestine, despite the risks and despite the complexity of the issues. King argued, when speaking of Vietnam, that even “when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict,” we must not be mesmerized by uncertainty. “We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.”

To be clear, King was opposed to a war that resulted in the deaths of 1,350,000 people, which is nearly the same amount of Arabs living in Israel currently. King was opposed to a war in which no Americans were attacked prior to us getting involved. Israel is attacked regularly from multiple groups in and out of the nation who support the Palestinian movement. King was opposed to a war that took focus and resources away from his cause.

As he said, “We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem.”

To be fair, the author of the NY Times article, Michelle Alexander, was using his anti-war speech to demonstrate the courage King displayed as inspiration for the courage she feels BDS supporters need today. Had she left it there, then there wouldn’t be much of a need to respond. However, she continued in the article to speculate King may not have been happy with Israel back then. Worse, she implied that he could have been a supporter of the BDS movement today.

This opinion is beyond questionable. King’s motivations for not wanting to outwardly support Israel’s actions following the Six Day War were for the sake of his movement, not based on personal feelings on the matter. It made sense to not take a side in a debate in which many of his supporters of African or Middle Eastern descent may have objected.

It is becoming increasing common in the BDS movement to point solely towards the actions of the Israeli government while ignoring the reasons for these actions. They often talk about homes being bulldozed, but they ignore the fact that punitive demolitions are a result of terrorist attacks. I am not in favor of these demolitions, but I would never hide the facts to support my claims. The BDS movement realizes calling out Israel for bulldozing Palestinian homes is most effective if the reasons are never mentioned.

As pro-BDS articles go, this one was strikingly coherent. This is a bigger problem than the unhinged hate articles we often see from BDS supporters. It’s easy to see how this one-sided portrayal in a publication as strong as the NY Times that invokes an icon like Martin Luther King Jr can garner support for the movement from those who would otherwise never consider it. The article is very careful to cut off cries of antisemitism and is written for rational thinkers rather than emotional feelers.

But therein lies the problem. It invokes King and his famous speech knowing full well few will actually read it. If they take the time to read or hear it, they’ll wonder what any of that has to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The NY Times is betting on the easy odds that nobody’s going to take the time.

None of the seven reasons King gives for opposing the Vietnam War could be applied to Israel. Invoking the speech and insinuating he would have been a BDS supporter is a disingenuous attempt to equate his righteous activism to the BDS movement itself.

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Pulitzer Prize winning fact checking agency PolitiFact has been accused of leaning dozens if not hundreds of their fact checks to favor the Democratic perspective on most issues. In one of the most egregious examples of partisan hacking, they declared a statement made by President Trump during his televised address to the nation as “Mostly False.”

Here’s the statement: Senator Charles Schumer “repeatedly supported a physical barrier in the past along with many other Democrats. They changed their mind only after I was elected president.”

This is undeniably 100% true. It’s demonstrable that Schumer and many Democrats have supported physical barriers along the border in the recent past. Their support for changed sharply once then-candidate Trump started talking about needing a border wall, so technically speaking that portion of President Trump’s statement wasn’t entirely true. He said their support changed after he was elected, but it started changing a few months after he first entered the race.

Here’s a graph from Cato Institute that shows support from Democrats at over 40% in October, 2015, when it still seemed far fetched that he would win the nomination, let alone the general election. From that point, it took a nose dive.

The portion of the PolitiFact article in which the author tries to justify the “Mostly False” rating attempts to distinguish between the differences in security barriers proposed by the President and accepted by Democrats in the past.

Schumer, along with tens of other Democrats including former President Barack Obama, voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which authorized building a fence along about 700 miles of the border between the United States and Mexico. That’s the majority of the barrier in place today along the southern border.

However, the fence was mocked as a “nothing wall” by Trump in the past and was far less ambitious, both politically and physically, than the wall Trump wants to build now.

This logical gymnastics is farcical when we read the statement that is allegedly “Mostly False.” The President did not suggest nor has he ever believed the Democrats supported the type of wall he’s requesting. That’s why he was very specific in stating Schumer and the Democrats “repeatedly supported a physical barrier in the past” instead of saying they supported his wall. This is important because for a fact-checker, the details are important.

They have repeatedly judged against conservatives for the tiniest nuance in their statements to attack. But when the statement is properly worded, as the President’s was, this fact checker decided to dig into intent rather than fact checking the statement itself. He penalized the statement as being false because he reconstructed what the President said as meaning something different. This is convenient selective inference on their part. But they’re completely unbiased. Just ask them.

When even the “trusted” fact checkers are willing to abandon ethics and call an obviously true statement false for the sake of political expediency, it’s no wonder so many Americans are frustrated with the entire mainstream media mechanism.

This is why we humbly request you support us with a donation so we can try to counterbalance the horrid leftism present in mainstream media.